


Admiral's Day Out

by MilkyMint



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Comedy, F/F, canon typical plot armor for pets, nobody should live here, nothing bad will happen to the Admiral, there are so many fear avatars in London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkyMint/pseuds/MilkyMint
Summary: The Admiral escapes Melanie's care and makes some new aquaintances.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	Admiral's Day Out

Melanie King could not catch a break. She really should have accounted for something to interrupt her day off, which she had planned to spend with her girlfriend, eating pizza and watching awful movies about giant sharks.  
But of course, before they’d even settled in, Georgie had gotten an emergency call from a friend, something about a horrible break up. And although Georgie hadn’t seemed too concerned, she also hadn’t thought introducing her Melanie as her new girlfriend under these circumstances would be a good idea.  
So, while Georgie was out doing damage control on someone else's love life, Melanie was cat sitting. Only without the cat, because the Admiral still hadn’t warmed up to her, and had been hiding ever since Georgie left.  
Melanie had made a half hearted attempt to lure him out, but given up pretty quickly and just collapsed on the sofa with a book on bog mummification, that utterly failed to capture her attention.

Social media and youtube were still no option. Watching other people's content without engaging wasn't fun, and shouting at the screen with only an absent cat for company was a level of pathetic Melanie hadn’t embraced yet.  
Neither was just wasting away on the sofa, like some sort of edwardian damsel with fainting fits, Melanie decided and got up to make tea.

She let her eye wander around the kitchen as she waited for the water to boil, from the spice rack to the basil on the window sill, to the Admiral sitting outside on the fire escape, looking back at her with no sign of distress or recognition.  
She managed to mouth 'how?' before he lazily turned around and disappeared from view.  
By the time she had scrambled through the window, he was already two stories down, and judging the distance from the landing to the ground.  
He ignored Melanie’s shouting, jumped down and strolled off, leaving Melanie running down the metal stairs at a hazardous speed.  
By the time she made it out of the tiny backyard that Georgie’s building shared with its neighbours, the Admiral was out of sight.

The street was empty, except for an inexplicable human statue on a little podest, who hadn’t realised that this was a horrible spot for busking.  
Melanie hurried up to the silent ringmistress, who didn’t move or show any sign that she noticed her at all. Even in her agitated state, Melanie had to admit that it was a good costume. The blank mannequin head on top was obviously fake, the performer’s actual head would be at chest height, and the podium was probably hollow to make the proportions seem right.  
But the bare arms also looked too thin to be real, yet the way they bend would have been impossible for inorganic material.  
Melanie focused and stared right where she suspected the busker’s eyes would actually be.

“Hey, did a cat come by here?” she asked.  
The performer didn’t react, their body perfectly rigid.  
“Hey, you can knock of the act, there's nobody here."  
It occurred to Melanie that perhaps this wasn't a busker after all, and she was literally talking to a plastic mannequin.  
She almost jumped when the thing moved, slowly raising one hand with a single finger extended.  
Melanie waited as patiently as she could for them to point in the direction the Admiral had gotten off to.  
The finger came to rest where lips would have been on her face, and Melanie barely suppressed the urge to shove her of her stupid podest. Getting into a literal clown fight would help neither her reputation, nor her hunt for the Admiral. She settled for the verbal equivalent.  
“Well screw you too.”

The silence that followed was broken by the unmistakable shriek of the Admiral being picked up against his will.  
Melanie gave one spiteful little kick against the podest and ran. 

She raced around the bend and almost collided with a short woman in a white t-shirt, who was holding the protesting Admiral. There was a picture printed on her shirt, halfway obscured by the Admiral’s bulk, but it looked like a generic shot of a smiling family.  
Behind her, Melanie could see more people in the same shirt pile into a travel bus. So this was either a cult, or the kind of big family who got matching t-shirts for their field trips. Either way, probably best to tread lightly.  
Melanie put on her polite smile, the one she had practised for interviews of potential witnesses.  
“Oh thank god, you caught him. He is really supposed to be an indoor cat.”

The woman answered Melanie’s professional smile with a wide grin and intense eye contact.  
“You are quite special, aren’t you?”  
Recruitment opener or flirt, Melanie wasn’t interested.  
“Uh. Thanks, I got a girlfriend,” she said, careful to keep smiling. “That’s her cat you’re holding, actually.”  
“Aw, that’s a shame.”  
The Admiral was squirming in her arms, but she held him with ease, as if gravity was an inconvenience that happened to other people.  
Someone leaned out of the bus and yelled: "Harriet, we're leaving without you."  
"I'm coming, coming," Harriet shouted back.  
"Well, I guess sometimes the short times are the sweetest." She shifted her grip on the Admiral, looked Melanie straight in the eye, winked, and said: "Catch."  
Melanie never found out if she actually would have thrown the Admiral, because he chose this moment to bite Harriet in the hand.  
She yelped and dropped him, and the Admiral shot off.  
Melanie dashed passed her without pausing to apologize. Anyone who joked about throwing a cat deserved what was coming to them. 

The street ended in a crossroads, and Melanie paused to catch her breath and wildly looked around for a sign of the Admiral.  
Nothing. Not a stray hair.

The coffee shop that took up the entire corner of the street she’d just come through had a closed door. Busy street to her left, touristy shops straight ahead, ominous dark alley to the right. Plenty of people, but nobody who seemed startled or concerned, or even particularly curious.  
A woman in front of the coffee shop, cradling a cup, no she was typing something on her phone, no she was just standing there with the hands in the pockets of her skirt.

"Your cat went that way," she said before Melanie had a chance to ask, nodding her beanie covered head towards the alley.  
"He's not my cat," Melanie managed to get out as she passed, and only once she was around the corned did she wonder how that woman knew she was looking for a cat at all. Probably some psychic stuff, the woman had looked like an esoteric sort.  
If it turned out her directions had been based on today's horoscope, Melanie would go back and strangle her with one of all those stupid scarfs. 

She turned another corner and stopped dead in her tracks.  
It was a dead end, a few metal doors in the high brick walls indicating delivery entrances.  
At the end of the narrow alley stood the Admiral, and he wasn't alone.  
The short, muscular woman in front of him was half crouching, one hand extended towards the Admiral, who had every hair standing on end and only stopped growling every few seconds to spit at her.

"Touch the cat and die!" Melanie shouted, and felt ridiculous the moment the words were out. But something about this woman seemed dangerous, maybe it was the way she didn’t respect the Admiral’s clear aversion, maybe it was the tattoo of a screaming face on her back, but this was clearly not a nice person, and Melanie advanced with caution.

The woman finally turned towards Melanie, and her expression slowly shifted from mild entertainment to utter delight.  
"How kind of you to come, I rarely get an audience." She spoke slowly, deliberately, savoring every word.  
Her eyes narrowed as she cocked her head, as if listening for faint music.  
"Oh, you're one of them, aren't you? Violence with no impact except the pain itself, no finesse. Artless amateurs. I got here first, so run along." 

That was weird enough to stop Melanie for a moment. But of course, even on her day off she couldn't escape her shitty workplace. The anger from that reminder managed to burn away any apprehension, and she squared her shoulders.  
"Fine, you got me. I’m with the Magnus Institute, and it sounds like you know what kind of bastards we can be, so you better stop whatever the hell it is your doing and I’ll let you walk away.”  
"The Institute?"  
She didn't stop smiling, but couldn’t hide the brief flicker of panic in her eyes.  
The woman looked at the hissing Admiral, back at Melanie, and back at the Admiral.  
Finally, she lowered her hand and took a single step back.  
"Never mind, I'm not dealing with this again. Take your stupid cat and get out of here."  
As she shouldered past Melanie, there was a burst of intense heat, accompanied by the smell of gasoline and boosted bass playing in the distance, but that last part was probably from an unrelated car driving by.  
Melanie didn't take her eyes of her until she swaggered around the corner.  
When she turned back to the cat, the Admiral was crouching in front of a metal door with a peeling coat of yellow paint, clearly calculating if he could jump the handle to get it open.  
"Oh no you don't," Melanie said as she scooped him up.  
She ignored his little meows of protest all the way to the flat. 

Georgie was still out when they got home, so Melanie clambered back up the fire escape and through the window, and really hoped the strugglin cat in her arms would prevent people from calling the police.  
Once she made sure that all exits were locked she let the Admiral down and collapsed on the sofa.  
She had about two seconds of peace, before the Admiral settled on her legs and demanded attention.  
A moment later the front door opened and Georgie entered, and Melanie tried very very hard to act casual.  
“Hey babe. How was the break up?”  
Georgie sighed.  
“As I thought, false alarm. I swear if they don’t break up for real, I’ll make them one day.” She kicked her shoes off and gave Melanie a critical look.  
“Did you move at all while I was gone?" Georgie asked as she draped her coat over the back of the sofa.  
"I don't see how I could," Melanie answered, gesturing to the cat in her lap.  
Georgie laughed and leaned down for a quick kiss, before she disappeared into the kitchen. 

Melanie scratched the cat between his ears, and whispered: "Your little AWOL stint is going to stay our secret, right? You don't want to get court-martialed, do you? No, you don’t."  
Somehow, the Admiral managed to look at her smugly. That bastard knew he outranked her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :D


End file.
